Naturally, I had to know how he did it. And since I was his roommate, he showed me, although I was never as good or as quick as Floyd.

First, he explained, you need a paperclip.

Thinking back, I must have been aware on some subliminal level of the paperclip lying on the floor. I had lashed out at Sykes, who’d made the mistake of sitting just that little bit too close to me, sending his briefcase flying, cards and papers scattering across the floor.

I pulled myself off the bed, dropping down on one side of it until I could see the paperclip, lying just beneath the sink. I had a struggle reaching it, chained to the bed as I still was, but I finally managed to scoot the paperclip under my fingertips and get a hold of it.

I unfolded one end of the paperclip, before inserting the tip into the keyhole of the cuffs. Then it was just a matter of bending the wire back, with the tip still inserted, until it was at a ninety-degree angle to the lock. The fiddly part – which I always had the most trouble with – involved carefully working the wire until the inner mechanism popped loose, thereby releasing the coiled spring which opened the lock . . .

I muttered and swore and worked at it for a lot longer than just sixty seconds. But after some minutes of muted swearing, I heard a satisfying click, and the cuffs slid from around my wrist.

I stood properly for the first time in days, my muscles aching as I did so. I slipped quickly through the inner chamber door, then gently eased the outer one open too. I felt a rush of relief that it hadn’t been locked. But then, why lock it when I was chained up inside?

I peered up and down a corridor, seeing and hearing nothing. There was a window at one end, through which I saw the night sky. I tiptoed along the corridor to a corner where I found an empty nurse’s station, a stairwell visible beyond a set of fire doors.

‘Hey!’

I twisted around to see a uniformed soldier back the way I had come, his eyes wide in shock. His hand reached for the holster at his hip.

I ran through the fire doors and into the stairwell, throwing myself down the steps as fast as I could. Almost before I realized it I was on the ground level, and I battered through another set of doors until I was outside. The air was summer warm, and I tasted jasmine in the night air. Crickets chirped somewhere off in the distance; wherever we were, it was a hell of a long way from snowy old England – indeed, a lot farther, I would soon learn, than I could ever have imagined.